Modern hearing aids require configuration to match specific hearing loss, physical features, and lifestyle of the wearer. This process is called “fitting” and is typically performed by audiologists who treat persons with hearing loss and proactively prevents related damage. The fitting and fine-tuning of hearing aids today is not evidence based, as audiometric tests used today in essence are based on self-reported data. This is also true for the outcome data on hearing aid satisfaction as they are based on self-reported questionnaires. Self-reported data can be prone to several biases, such as recall bias, prestige bias, and misclassification bias, which can all cloud the outcome measure's reliability and validity and thus can hinder evidence based clinical decision support. Moreover, traditional audiometric tests used in the clinic today can have limitations as tone detection in the brain does not solely reflect how good speech is perceived, and how speech perception requires listening effort. Fitting to the audiometric tests does also not take into account individual cognitive efforts and problems in processing the sounds encountered.
Thus, there is a need for improvements in the technical field of hearing aid fitting/adjustment.